We order nachos and combination chicken-and-steak fajitas, a decision we come to easily. “Good to know we like the same foods,” she says. “That bodes well for us.” She laughs, and I laugh too. I like that she’s assessing this openly, as though we are two members of a committee evaluating the potential for our relationship from a detached vantage point. I nod in agreement. When we finish, the waitress asks if we want a box for the leftovers. Yes, but Anouk says no. The waitress clears away the food and brings us the bill, which we split.

Even though we are the last ones to leave the restaurant, it feels early enough that I don’t want our night to end. “I’m not ready to leave you yet,” she says as we walk to the subway.

“Do you want to come over?” I ask, then remember my current living situation: a pot-reeking, barely furnished studio on the border of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy. “Or maybe I could come over?”

We take the 4 train to Atlantic. I comment on there being more stairs from the train to the street than I remember, and she laughs, presumably at the filler-like quality of my comment. On the walk to her apartment, we talk about productivity. Sometimes she’s like a squirrel with a nut, she tells me, other times she watches porn and masturbates all day. I blush at the word masturbate, our first overt reference to anything sexual. “I’m like that too,” I tell her. “Always at the extremes.”

She leads me to her building and up two flights of stairs. She unlocks the door and flips on the lights to reveal a beautiful apartment: spacious, wood-floored, huge windows, and minimally decorated with elegant furniture and equally tasteful, professionally framed art. I cringe thinking about my apartment in grad school, the walls bare aside from a few postcards and photographs. “Do you want something to drink?” she asks. “I have whiskey.”

“Sure.” I never drink whiskey—I’m not sure I’ve ever had a glass of it—and find it sexy that she does. She goes to the kitchen and returns with two tumblers, each filled a finger deep. We sit beside each other on the modern elegant couch. We make awkward, self-conscious conversation while sipping our whiskies. I am not mentally present, my teeth chattering a little. Finally we stop talking and I ask if I can kiss her. She says yes.

Our kiss is long but chaste. Closed-mouthed. When I pull away I look into her eyes.

“What?” she says.

“What what?”

“Why are you looking at me so dramatically?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Isn’t that what you do when you kiss someone?”